


Of the truths within our reach

by simauthor87



Category: The Sims (Video Games)
Genre: Alien Abduction, Aliens are weird and have their own views on things, Childbirth, F/M, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Gen, Impregnation, Mpreg, Multi, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pascal is learning to be Woke, Pregnancy, domestic life
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-03-18
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:34:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 16,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22824940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simauthor87/pseuds/simauthor87
Summary: Get abducted by aliens, he’d thought. It’ll be great, he’d thought. I’ll become a famous scientists, he’d thought.Great.Just… great.Pascal Curious used to know a fair number of things: loads about biology and physics, nothing about romantic relationships, and that he was a freak having a baby. Now he's not so sure.
Relationships: Pascal Curious/OFC
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> > This story is dedicated to Pascal Curious, who we all know is a freak in the sheets. I consider him the sexiest Sim to ever Sim, fight me.
> 
> My child brain from many years ago when I first played with this neighborhood completely missed some of the setup Maxis had put in for people to discover, especially around the Curious brothers, so I've spent all this time mentally building a completely different story from what had been intended. So this'll be way different from what's considered canon but perhaps that will make it interesting to people?
> 
> The first few chapters aren't what I'd hoped for but I'm not sure how to make them better right now and wanted to at least get them out there. I might rewrite them when we, eventually, get to the end of this story (and once my keyboard is fixed). I promise though that once we get into the main plot a few chapters in, Things will Flow, and there will be Twists and Turns and Adventures and Babies. So many babies!
> 
> Let me know if there's anything in particular you want more of, I want to try to keep this story focused to the main plot but can write the side plots too if people want them.

“–starts tomorrow,” Vidcund snaps, and Pascal realizes he’d been dozing.

“I mean, sounds unnecessary?” Lazlo puts forward, taking another bite of pizza. “But if you think it’s best.”

“Yes,” is the only response before Vidcund heads back out the front door, no doubt going for the telescope. Pascal shakes his head and looks at his younger brother.

“You’ve no idea what he said, do you?” the man says through mouthfuls of cheese and bread. It’s not meant maliciously; with Lazlo, things rarely are.

“I sometimes think my brain has stopped working,” the eldest brother admits. It makes the youngest one laugh, pointing a finger and jabbing at Pascal’s stomach.

“Boop!”

“Hey, watch it!” He rubs the offended area. “That hurt.”

“Did it?”

“Yeah.”

“I’d think the whole thing hurts.”

“Kind of,” Pascal admits. Of his two brothers, Lazlo was definitely the easier one to talk to, but the divide between them remained. Lazlo just was easy to talk to, always had been, probably always would be. “What did he say?”

“Person tomorrow.” Lazlo takes a bite of a new slice of pizza. "Cleaning and cooking and stuff.”

“Here?!”

Lazlo nods and shrugs. “Why, you busy?”

* * *

The doorbell rings before his brothers leave for work, Pascal cowering in his bedroom. He hears voices outside, then moving around. Vidcund pointing and snapping, as was his nature, and Lazlo following and joking, as was his. Through the door he can’t really hear the third voice.

No one else could know he was pregnant. Already he was on thin ice with work, and it’s not like they could go to a… what kind of doctor did pregnant women go to? one of those, for exams and such. Pascal was too afraid of anyone finding out, and Vidcund was very good at drawing ire upon them.

Get abducted by aliens, he’d thought. It’ll be great, he’d thought. I’ll become a famous scientists, he’d thought. Now he was on the verge of agoraphobia and anthrophobia.

Great.

Just… great.

“Have you seen Pascal yet this morning?” Vidcund is clearly standing just outside his door. Probably gesturing over his shoulder in annoyance.

Lazlo’s reply is muffled but involves, “Nah.”

“Well, eventually…” and the voices trail off as the three people outside his bedroom move away.

Times like this made him very annoyed he didn’t have an attached bathroom to his bedroom.

* * *

They’d built the small, detached structure a few months prior. It had been meant to be able to function as a clean room, and Pascal had always had the impression that Vidcund would have liked to dissect him in there if he could. He didn’t think it personal but rather just how his brother was with all people.

All morning he’d heard movement between the structure and the house. Boxes being moved. Deliveries being made. Then, eventually and inexplicably, a woman’s voice singing. It was all very confusing, Pascal choosing instead to focus on his personal scientific paper he was writing.

At work he’d tried to explain, about the abduction and what came after, but he hadn’t gotten very far before his boss told him quite directly that he considered Pascal Curious to be an underperforming dreamer who wasn’t fit for the position he held and who was only tolerated because his boss had inherited him when he took over the team but hadn’t yet found a reason to put on the paperwork for letting him go. It hadn’t exactly been good for his ego, which had always been fragile at best.

The day he’d be fired was fast approaching, as was his baby. That… that was a thought he could no longer keep putting off, looking down from his charts to his expanding stomach. No, the baby would come in a few months, and neither the… father? nor uncles knew what to do or how to prepare. How was the baby even suppose to… be born? Pascal shivers at that thought, pushing it aside for another day.

Until those two events happened, the firing and the baby, Pascal figured he could try to do something productive. Write about his abduction, even if work didn’t care, and his pregnancy, though he didn’t want to tell people about that. Guy who met aliens? Cool. Guy who got knocked up by aliens? What the fuck.

Maybe he’d call Paul; Paul and him had had an understanding for years. But the phone was in the kitchen, and so was….

His stomach gurgles. Oh no.

* * *

He managed in the end to avoid the new person for three days before the fourth day found a mixture of Vidcund’s annoyance, Lazlo’s laughter, the smell of food being made, and Pascal’s mental berating coming together to form an action plan:

Walk out of his bedroom and deal with the consequences of meeting the new person. If he could be impregnated by aliens, surely he could do that much.

Peering around the corner into the kitchen, Pascal falters when he realizes three things:

First, the person Vidcund had hired to help take care of the house and the baby was a woman.

Second, that she was a very young and pretty sort of woman.

And third, that she was wearing a very sexual French maid’s outfit, bending over to peer into their oven, giving Pascal a view of her thighs and round ass. When she stood up to check the stove, it was her large breasts that stood out.

Then she looked up.

“Oh, hello!” she smiles, wiping her hands on a towel and approaching the kitchen island. “You must be Pascal.”

“Ye– yeah,” he stammers, still cowering. Her hair was blonde and her eyes were blue and she awakened something in him that Pascal didn’t know he had. “And– and you?”

“I’m Winifred,” she sighs before a timer goes off. “Oh! What was that one?” With her back to him, he darts to the kitchen island, taking one of the chairs on the bar side. At seven months along, it was hard to miss his stomach, but he thought maybe he could try to hide it for a bit longer. The pretty lady turns off a stove burner, stirs something, then puts a lid on it. “Well now,” and she moves to stand directly across from him, her hands folded on the counter in front of her. It makes her arms push her breasts in and he has to fight from staring. “I’m so very glad to finally meet you, Pascal. Vidcund told me you might be needing my help in the next few months, before the baby comes–”

“What‽” His brother, his own brother, had betrayed him like this! Pascal was mortified, she knew, she knew, she knew—

“The baby,” she repeats, eyebrows drawing together. “He was kind of vague on the details, I figured I’ll figure out what I need to know eventually. I’ve taken care of small children before you see.” She smiles at him and her eyelashes flutter and he might die right here, the way his heart was racing and his chest pounding and of course the baby decided to start kicking at this moment, right at something important internally. “I’ve been an au pair and then a governess, though recently more just a housekeeper.” Her smile falters, her eyes falling to her hands. His eyes move there too, though they’re just hands, bare of any ornamentation.

“He said you’d clean and cook as well?” Pascal tries to ask in a way that’s cool and confident but makes his voice crack like he wasn’t a fucking adult man, Watcher help him.

“Oh yes! I love a tidy house filled with food. Speaking of, can I make you some lunch?”

* * *

He manages to stay sat at the counter for several hours, watching this Winifred move around, reorganizing the kitchen, making lists of things to buy, asking him questions as to what he liked to eat and what scent was his favorite.

“I don’t know,” he says, shrugging. “Nothing?”

“Nothing! Pascal,” and she laughs as she says his name, kind of like how Lazlo did with his teasing, except his was brotherly whereas hers is almost sweet like a lover. “There must be some scent in the world you like: citrus, floral, woody, I don’t know… ocean–”

“Ocean isn’t a scent,” he states before the baby kicks him really, really, really hard and gets a groan that’s thankfully covered up by the woman riffling through pot lids.

“Neither of your brothers had an opinion either so I guess I’ll just….” She shrugs. “I’ll just buy a bunch of scents, we’ll see what works.”

“Ok,” Pascal says and perhaps it comes out too intensely, not hiding his pain enough, as she whips around to look at him in confusion.

“Are you ok?”

“Yes. … No. … I–” His brain blips and before he can stop it, Pascal announces, “I’m pregnant!” and it’s a very loud announcement, almost a shout.

In contrast, the woman’s response is a quiet, “Oh.” Then her eyes trail up and down him before she blinks in surprise. “Oh! I get it,” and she laughs to herself, “I get it now, this is starting to make sense, I get it.”

“Get it?” Pascal repeats and his voice cracks again.

“Lazlo has been making weird jokes when I serve dinner,” and she comes to stand before him again, hands folded neatly before herself on the counter. “And Vidcund has been spouting vague riddles.”

“In fairness,” and Pascal is realizing that his heart is racing from how much of not-a-reaction the very beautiful woman he maybe, kind of, wanted to have sex with if that was a thing Pascal was capable of — how much of not-a-reaction she had made. “In fairness, he’s kind of always like that.”

“Interesting,” and the tip of her tongue sticks out from between her lips as she thinks. “Interesting.”

The mail truck drives by outside. The clock chimes the hour.

Then the woman asks, “How far along are you?”

“Seven… seven months.”

“Do you know how many weeks?”

Pascal’s eyes dart around. “Should I?”

She smiles and this time, this time, there is a bit of pity in it. “We’ll start on that part in a few days.”

* * *

That night Pascal lays in bed, imagining Winifred at dinner, bending over the counter to serve his brothers. He imagines them taking in her body and feels angry about it. He imagines her not noticing and feels angry about that too. He imagines her bending over him in bed, and his cock, normally so useless and ignored, springs to life.

He runs a head over his stomach, swollen and heavy and hard. What had Vidcund gotten him into?


	2. Chapter 2

By the end of the first week, Pascal is comfortable enough to walk around in Winifred’s presence. By the end of the second week, he stays for dinner with his brothers. By the end of the third week, he knows he’s in too deep.

He’s no expert, but Pascal Curious is pretty sure what he’s feeling is love.

“Please,” she laughs, passing him his breakfast. His brothers are gone for the day, Pascal having learned to wait for their departure to emerge. He didn’t want to talk to them, only Winifred. “That’s not a proper dining situation! You should have a table to sit around, like a proper family meal.” Pascal can’t remember the last time the three of them ate at a table: Jenny’s wedding maybe?

“What do you suggest?”

“Well, that little plant room could work, though it’s honestly my favorite area so far so I don’t want to touch it. We can also move the chessboard–”

“I love the chessboard!” Pascal protests.

“I’m sure you do, we’ll just move it somewhere else and put a table in that area, once the baby comes I doubt there’ll be formal dining for a while but at least the three of you can enjoy it while you can.”

Winifred’s back is to him as she speaks, Pascal taking in the way her outfit dips in at her waist and then back out for her hips. “Won’t you join us?”

“Me?” Winifred shakes her head. “No, Vidcund made it clear he doesn’t want me getting in the way, and that’s quite alright. I bring my dinners back to my room.” She turns, draining the pasta she’d been cooking.

“I’d…,” and he falters when she looks up at him, steam billowing up and around her face. Her hair is up today, and if anything it’s more lovely than normal. “I’d like it, if you joined us.”

Her small smile can’t be hidden as she puts the pot back on the stove, and Pascal imagines that she’s blushing too. “Well, for now, joining you for breakfast and lunch is quite the start.”

* * *

Lazlo visits after dinner, Pascal having been staring at the door out of his room. It would lead him straight to where Winifred has been living. “What do you think of her?”

“Huh?”

“Winifred Jones, world’s most patient human being.” Lazlo laughs at his own joke, sitting at the end of the bed next to Pascal. “Watcher she puts up with everything from Vidcund, I don’t think I’d be able to.”

“Like what?”

“Like that uniform he told her to wear, because he felt it was,” and Lazlo clears his throat to do his terrible though funny impression of their brother, “‘appropriate of a working woman’. I don’t think he even knows what he said.”

Pascal’s eyebrows draw together.

“You don’t either, great,” and Lazlo rolls his eyes. “I guess she puts up with you by day and him by evening.”

That wounds his pride. Pascal wasn’t someone to be put up with! They got along… perfectly reasonably. “And what about you?”

“Me? I’m a dream to be around, duh.”

* * *

He’s sat in a chair nearby, watching her assemble the table and put it into place. “You don’t have to wear that.”

She looks up from her tools, tongue sticking out a little bit between her lips. “Pardon?”

“That… that,” and he gestures to her maid outfit before putting his hands back on top of his stomach to rest. “It seems Objectifying.” Pascal had been using his nights, while everyone else was asleep, to read about Women and Feminism and Being A Man Worth Dating.

Well, that last one made him feel inadequate, so mostly the first two.

Winifred rolls her eyes. “It makes your brother happy though, and I’ve been asked to do far worse things.”

A quiet lulls over them again as the table comes together. The chairs are assembled next, new, proper dining chairs. Vidcund had protested but Lazlo had calmed him since Pascal had secretly asked him to agree to their purchase.

“Are you just putting up with me?” For as long as he could remember, Pascal had never been good at timing. He’d announce something too loudly or ask something too bluntly before immediately regretting it, telling himself that next time he’d do better, next time he’d act like a normal human. Maybe the aliens should have kept him; it’s not like he could have felt more an outsider with them than he felt in his own town.

Winifred wipes her hands of wood stuff, walks carefully over the half built furniture, and then kneels before Pascal. He can see right down her top, making his cheeks burn. “Pascal?”

“Ye… yes?”

Her mouth opens as if to speaks, then closes, then opens again before he cuts her off.

“I’m sorry!”

“Pascal–“

“I didn’t–”

“Pascal Curious, shut your mouth please.” She pinches the bridge of her nose, rubbing the area, before looking up at him.

He doesn’t like the way she does it though, as if she was looking through him, into him. As if she knew who he was on the inside: a scared freak whose brothers didn’t even like him and who’d never even been kissed.

“Pascal, it’s always awkward for me when I start somewhere new. And it’s typical for it to be awkward for the family I start with. But here’s something I’ve learned over time.” Learned facts, Pascal was good with those. “It’s best if we’re clear from the start of if I’m an employee or a friend. I don’t particularly care which, but it’s easier for everyone if we’re honest about it.

“Now, Vidcund clearly sees me as an employee. Lazlo keeps calling me dude, so I take that to mean a friend. What do you want our relationship to be, Pascal?”

Sexual, his brain says, but for once his mouth doesn’t betray him

“I… I’d….” He takes a deep breath. “Friend please.”

“Ok,” and she nods, half smiling. “Ok, then let’s start over, as friends, how’s that?”

The last time Pascal had made a friend was a test subject. “I don’t think I’m a good friend.”

“Well,” and she stands so that now he’s looking at her flat stomach and wide hips, “practice makes perfect. Give me ten minutes.”

* * *

It’s actually seventeen minutes, Pascal having stayed in his seat, before Winifred returns through the front door. Gone is her maid uniform; instead she’s wearing denim shorts and a tank top that says Académie Le Tour. She walks up to him and sticks out her hand.

“Hi,” she says, “I’m Winifred Jones but you can call me Winnie.”

Pascal stares.

“Shake my hand and respond, please,” she prompts.

Carefully he labors out of the chair, feeling it’s appropriate to be standing for this even if his back ached, nearly eight months along. “Hi… Winnie, I’m Pascal Curious. You can… call me Pascal.”

The woman snorts at that, as if it had been funny. “Well Pascal, I look forward to our friendship.”

* * *

“Is that normal?” he asks, propped up in bed. Lazlo on the floor shrugs.

“Dude, what’s normal anymore, especially for you?”

“What did Vidcund think of the dining table?”

“Eh, he was mostly annoyed she wasn’t dressed like a floozie, I’m starting to think he wants to bone her, but otherwise he didn’t notice.”

“Bone… her?”

“Watcher Almighty, Pascal, do you really know so little? This!” and Lazlo sticks his pointer finger through a circle he makes with his other hand. “Lots of this!”

“Ok, ok, I get it!” So his brother wanted to engage in sexual relations with the same woman Pascal did. Great, this was Circe Salamis all over again, and Pascal knew very well that he’d come out the worse of the two brothers from that scenario. “Do you think she…,” but Lazlo is laughing before he finishes his thought, rising from the floor to prepare to leave.

“Watcher no! I’ve never seen someone less interested in a man than her over Vidcund.”


	3. Chapter 3

“I’ve never seen someone less interested in a man than her over Vidcund.” The thought echoes through his mind all night, throughout breakfast, and right up until Winnie announces,

“Alright, I should have gotten to this sooner, time to examine you.”

“What?!”

“To your room, let’s go!” Her hand takes his, leading him along, and Pascal could die right then and there knowing this was the farthest he had ever gotten with someone he liked romantically. “On the bed, I just need to grab the notebook.”

Pascal pauses. “Notebook?”

“Vidcund put me in charge of,” and she clears her throat much the same way Lazlo would, “‘the scientific measurements, don’t fuck this up too much’.” She shakes her head and rolls her eyes on her way out the door.

Ah! Those measurements. Since discovering Pascal was pregnant, Vidcund had been taking measurements of his body’s development every week. At first it had been thrilling, to have a shared project with the sibling he struggled most to connect with, but that had faded as soon as his stomach had begun expanding. Vidcund made him feel like a dirty test subject, scrutinized beneath his gaze as if he was disgusting. As if he needed help feeling bad about his body.

“I have found the notebook!” Winnie announces upon her return, Pascal still sat on the edge of the bed. “And the tape measure, though I brought my own as well.” The one Vidcund tended to use was cold and had rough edges that Pascal didn’t like. Winnie’s looked softer and was a light pink color.

She comes to stand before him, and then it hits him like a ton of bricks: she was going to look at his body. This woman he was trapped with every day and masturbated almost nightly to the thought of was going to see his awful body.

Her: lithe, lean, sensual, incredible.

Him: blubber, bulging stomach, alien experiment.

“Now, how do you normally do this?”

“Do… this?”

She waves the tape measures around in a vague circle. “Vidcund, as always, spoke in half statements like a ghost haunting a Danish castle.”

“What?”

“How do I measure you, Pascal?” Her eyes take him in not like Vidcund would, as something to be studied, but instead as someone to talk to. “Show me what to do. I don’t want you to feel awkward about this.”

Friends, he thinks, can say things like when they’re awkward.

“I’ve never liked the way Vidcund does this,” Pascal voices. Winnie softens, sitting beside him on the bed.

“I imagine he gets right to the point and doesn’t ask how you’re doing.”

“In fairness, that’s how I would probably have treated him, before all… this.” He gestures at his stomach, his gaze moving sideways to find Winnie taking in his protruding belly.

When she looks up, her cheeks are flushed and she seems a bit thrown from her usual, confident self. She inches closer.

“Do you mind… can I…?”

“Oh!” The only ones who had touched his stomach had been him, Vidcund when measuring, and Lazlo when joking around. Pascal found he liked rubbing it, both because it felt good physically but also that it just pleased him. Made him feel less like an experiment and more like an expectant parent. Like a normal person would. “Uh, uh sure?”

Oh Watcher, oh Watcher, oh Watcher! They both look down at his stomach, her hand moving as if in slow motion towards it. The moment feels big, really big, like he hadn’t realized their conversation about being friends had been until after the fact.

This though, this Pascal knows is important, and knows to keep his mouth shut about.

Her dainty hand is pressed gently against his stomach, stretched skin hidden beneath his shirt. Nothing happens though they both wait, Winnie beginning to make soft circles against his belly.

They both look up and their eyes lock. She’s so close, and now he can see the way she swallows as if nervous, the way her hair falls from where she’d pushed it behind her ear, how her skin isn’t perfectly even but has little marks on it here and there. Pascal can feel her so close to him, and she doesn’t look away so he doesn’t either, and he’s not sure if it’s suppose to feel like this but it all feels kind of sexual? Except she’s looking at him the way he’d imagined she might in his head, as if she wanted him, though no one had ever actually looked at him like that since no one ever had actually wanted him.

Who would, after all.

“Pascal–”

“Winnie–”

Neither gets a chance to speak first, interrupted by a sudden kick from the unborn baby.

“Oh!” Winnie giggles, but instead of pulling away, she leans in closer, pressing her hand more firmly against where the kick had been. He can smell her perfume: she liked the scent of lavender. He wants very much to lean forward and kiss her. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Pascal echoes.

Again, neither gets a chance to speak first, this time interrupted by the front door slamming. “PASCAL!”

Vidcund’s voice makes Winnie pull back suddenly, standing quickly. “I should go,” and like that she’s out the door.

* * *

He’s silent at dinner, angry that Vidcund had had to pick today to come home with his stupid news about Loki fucking Beaker getting another Watcher damned promotion and how much he hated him and how he was going to get promoted thanks to his writeup on Pascal’s abduction and Pascal’s pregnancy and Pascal’s life being ruined by all of this.

Winnie hadn’t been seen since then, Lazlo going to speak with her. “She doesn’t feel well and doesn’t want to risk getting Pascal sick,” he’d reported back, but the eldest brother knew that wasn’t it.

She clearly regretted what had happened today. Getting close to him. Touching him. He didn’t blame her: no one had ever liked him before. He wonders if they can salvage their friendship, which was often times the only thing that made him feel like getting out of bed.

As soon as he’s done eating, Pascal hides away in his bedroom, laying on his bed, hands resting on the underside of his stomach. His boss said if he didn’t come in in the next week, he’d be fired. Winnie clearly regretted touching him. Vidcund was Vidcund and Lazlo was Lazlo. Now, what had once been the thought he didn’t want to contemplate was his only form of release: his pregnancy.

He didn’t remember much, from the abduction. He remembered being at the telescope, then being lifted from it. From there things became fuzzy: corridors, bright lights, beeping noises. At some point he found himself on a stretcher of some kind, maybe? Someone had leaned over him, said something to him. He knows something had happened to him, physically, but what it was was a complete blank. Then there was the sounds of machines beeping before he was back at the telescope, the sun rising.

The baby kicks, Pascal rubbing where the foot had been. He’d thought about talking to his stomach, at the beginning, but felt stupid doing it. Instead he just stared at it, and wondered how on earth this baby was coming out.

It at least kept him from contemplating being a father with a child.

A knock at the outside door breaks his reveries. Winnie!

“Come in,” and he hopes his voice sounded steady unlike how he felt, a sheepish Winnie opening the door and slipping inside. Pascal tries to stand but his pregnant belly defeats him, the woman rushing forward to stop him.

“No, no! Don’t get up for my sake!” In the rush, one of her hands ends up on his arm, another on his stomach, their faces level.

Pascal’s breath catches. “You came back.” The woman blushes.

“I shouldn’t have run out on you like that. I’m sorry, Pascal.” She sits on the edge of his bed. “I don’t think today I was a very good friend.” She twists her hands in her lap, not meeting his eyes.

“Practice makes perfect,” Pascal whispers and that gets a reaction of surprise before laughter. Her tension made him tense, and her pleasure made him melt inside.

“That is very true. I was just… thrown off, by your brother coming home. Things… things were escalating, I think, and I don’t want you to be uncomfortable with anything I did–”

“Uncomfortable?” Pascal echoes. “I… I thought you were the one who was uncomfortable with me.”

Winnie pushes her hair behind her ear, pulling her sleeves over her hands. She’d changed from today’s outfit of a summer dress into an Académie Le Tour sweatshirt and short shorts. “Why would I be uncomfortable with you?”

Why would she be uncomfortable with him? Pascal’s brain spins at the possibilities. He didn’t know how to be social. He didn’t really make or get jokes. He just sort of followed her around all day, every day. He’d probably been pretty obvious in his staring at her over the last month. He was fucking pregnant–

“Pascal?” Her voice interrupts his spiral.

“Yes?”

“Do you like being my friend?”

Was this a trick question? “Yes.”

“Do you want to… only be my friend?” She puts a weird emphasis in her sentence that he doesn’t understand.

“What other options are there?”

Winnie looks at him, confused for a moment, before she sees how genuine he is. It makes her blush even more deeply. “Pascal, I think you know.”

Did he?

Oh!

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m not the smartest man,” Pascal offers as way of an apology. Not that he necessarily understood the comment; it was one Lazlo would make about him, that he was so smart he had stopped being smart.

“That’s ok. I don’t need you to be the smartest man.” One of Winnie’s hands moves so that a few of her fingers brush against his, resting there. “Just a good one. And I do think you are a good one.”

His heart threatens to burst from his chest, pushing his hand a bit more forward to feel more of hers against him. Someone liked him? Someone liked him, that he liked? It was all too confusing, too unexpected. Pascal was a scientist, and all evidence collected up until this point had disproved the hypothesis that someone, some day, would like him.

“Maybe,” and she looks away, as if embarrassed, “maybe I can measure you now? If that’s alright.”

The only problem Pascal can think of is his cock becoming erect. “Yeah. Yeah. I… I’ll show you, how Vidcund does it.”

The blonde woman smiles, and collects the notebook and tape measures she’d left in his room hours earlier. Pascal takes the time to try to shift onto his back, which Vidcund always insisted on for consistency of results.

She puts the notebook on the ground, sitting on the edge of the bed again, beside him. When Winnie looks at him, pushing hair once more behind her ear, it’s with that same gaze she’d had when she’d proposed they’d be friends: as if she could see who he was on the inside. “How should I start?”

* * *

They’re almost completely silent, during the measuring. Pascal keeps wanting to think of something to say but finds at the same time that the silence isn’t bad or awkward or anything like that. It’s nice, if anything. There isn’t a need to speak, to explain, to justify, to apologize.

They just… are.

When he’d pulled his shirt up to expose his stomach, that had caused Winnie to pause, staring at his massive belly. He’d feared once more that she was disgusted by him but instead she’d looked up and smiled as if she was pleased by the sight of him, running a hand along the bare flesh in admiration.

From there she’d taken the measures: across his stomach this way, then the other, around, this distance, this change. Pascal figured that one day he’d look up how biological females progressed through their pregnancy. He’d learned, after all, it was technically correct to say that females typically had the biological ability to become pregnant, baring alien intervention; women didn’t have to be biologically female. He wonders if Winnie knew about that distinction.

Vidcund, annoyingly, had also taken to measuring the change in Pascal’s chest, which hadn’t started to grow until after he was half way through the pregnancy. They weren’t breasts per se at first, just puffiness, which had been unusual for him: before his pregnancy, Pascal had been on a three year running kick, finding it took the edge off when he was worked up and his anxiety was getting the better of him. When he started his third trimester, though, Pascal had to admit his chest had been transformed from flat to “moobs,” as Lazlo had told him they were called.

It had been an awkward transition from Winnie looking at and touching his distended stomach, which had somehow started to feel comfortable if not pleasurable, to exposing his embarrassing moobs to her. But she’d relaxed Pascal, who had been staring at the wall to avoid eye contact, with gentle touches to his belly between measurements, her hands not straying and grazing the way they had before. Being pregnant had somehow become a relatively ok thing to him, but breasts remained fundamentally not.

Finished, she’d pulled his shirt back down over his moobs but not his stomach, instead putting the notebook on the floor and resting a hand against his flesh. That’s when he’d looked at her again, really looked at her, and found her gentle fluttering of eyelashes and pushing of hair behind her ear to be, maybe, what he’d heard referred to as flirting.

Flirting.

Someone was flirting with him.

While also touching his pregnant belly.

“Win… Winnie?”

“Yes Pascal?”

“I… I think you’re very pretty, Winnie.”

She flushed and laughed and leaned over him close, as if she might kiss him. “Well I think you’re very handsome, Pascal, pregnant belly and all.” Then she kissed his cheek and he’d never been happier in all his life, not even when the aliens had first taken him. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally have a new keyboard and omg it's great to type again! So glad people have been enjoying this little story while I was without a computer, hopefully it'll keep rolling from here.

The week that followed saw things escalate in the best possible way.

On Monday, Winnie joined the Curious brothers for dinner. Vidcund protested that it wasn’t right but Lazlo had told him it had been his idea, even though it hadn’t been, even though Pascal hadn’t even asked Lazlo to do that. The youngest brother just knew to say it across the table from him, and Pascal had been grateful for that, even if it had meant Vidcund had stared at Winnie the entire time.

On Tuesday, he felt her breasts. Not on purpose! Pascal had stood up too quickly, lost his balance, and Winnie had rushed in to help keep him standing, her chest pressing into his back as she’d steadied him. Her hands had rested on his hip points just under his swollen belly, which had felt intimate. When she hadn’t pulled away right away, it had felt wonderful.

On Wednesday, Pascal had joined Winnie after dinner in her room. It felt so small with all her furniture in it, so much more than he had in his room: she had a bed large enough for two people, and a full length mirror, and a wardrobe, and a bookshelf and a table and a chair with a high back. There were pictures on the wall, but when Pascal had asked about some of them, Winnie had become wistful, so instead he’d asked about the books.

“Some of these are… big.”

That had made her laugh. “Yeah, well, I don’t know: I like big books and I cannot lie. I studied philosophy and literature, you see.”

Pascal, sat on the end of her bed — oh my Watcher he was sat on her bed, where she slept! — made a noise of surprise. “You– you double majored?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I did too,” he said with a little pride that grows when she smiles more widely. “People always told me I was being an over achiever.”

“Well then,” and she’d pulled down a book that she’d handed to him, “we over achievers have to stick together, now don’t we?”

The book had been about the moral questions raised by possible human/alien interactions and cross breeding. Pascal had stayed up all night reading it.

On Thursday, they sat in the garden to enjoy the break in heat and discuss the book. Pascal, as a scientist, had always believe that philosophy was no longer needed, but the book Winnie had given him had brought up questions he himself had had.

“I hadn’t realized that was philosophy,” he’d murmured as they ate lunch, watching the way Winnie pursed her lips to blow on her hot spoonful of food. Being aroused by her had become constant in her presence.

“A lot of scientists don’t, but I’m glad you seem to have enjoyed it.”

“Very much! I… I guess I hadn’t thought you were, you know, aware of alien things and all that.”

Winnie had put her spoon down and leaned back and looked sad before saying, “Unfortunately, my family has had bad experiences in the past.”

He’d thought of his father, who had never mentioned to his children his abduction, pregnancy, and first two children. Pascal wasn’t sure if his siblings even knew they had half sisters, but he did.

“Yeah, same here. We’ve never talked about it.”

“Me neither.”

The conversation had died down after that, and that afternoon he’d taught her chess while rain stormed outside.

On Friday, Pascal knew something had to happen. That was the way the week had been trending, but he didn’t know what or how.

Dinner found Lazlo and Winnie, as always, having a great time bantering about normal topics of conversation. Pascal watched quietly, Vidcund angrily.

“Philosophy,” the middle brother finally announces, “is a waste of time.” Winnie’s knee brushes up against Pascal’s.

“Is it?” she murmurs and there’s a slight edge to her words that normally isn’t there.

“We don’t need philosophy,” Vidcund states plain as day. “We have science.”

“What an interesting philosophical argument,” and the tease sees Vidcund stand, knock over his chair, and head outside. “I’m getting really over the adult temper tantrums,” Winnie murmurs. Lazlo laughs while Pascal struggles not to apologize.

“He’s just getting especially pissy that he hasn’t been abducted yet,” Lazlo says, looking at Pascal’s massive belly that kept him from sitting at the table like everyone else.

“Yeah, because he’s really missing out on all this fun,” and Pascal’s comment causes the other two to stare at him, open mouthed. “What– what?”

“Pascal Curious,” Winnie starts before Lazlo interrupts.

“Did you just make A JOKE?!”

* * *

They walk around the back of the house, to enjoy the gentle breeze blowing across the desert. Vidcund can be heard occasionally shouting things from on the highest platform with the telescope. Inside, Lazlo was watching TV.

Their hands occasionally brush one another’s before Winnie takes his, fully, and they stop to look at one another.

“Join me?” she asks and Pascal nods, following her into her room. Part of him hopes Vidcund can see them holding hands, can see Pascal going into her room with her. He’d bested him twice now. “Here, let’s get you comfortable,” and Winnie brings him around the bed to have him lay on it, pillows propping him up.

He was on her bed.

She’d just asked him to lay on her bed.

“Comfy?” she asks.

“Very,” and his face is hot as his voice cracks. She laughs nervously, sitting on the other half of the bed, facing him.

“Good.” She’s nervous too, he can tell.

For a few minutes they sit like that in silence, looking at each other, looking around each other. Pascal doesn’t know what to do and while he’d like to do something, he gets the impression that Winnie knows better what happens in situations like these.

Was it touching? Kissing? Oh Watcher!

“Pascal?”

“Yes?” and it comes out a half shout, his face twisted in panic as their eyes meet. For a second the woman doesn’t respond before she bursts out laughing.

“Pascal, what’s wrong?” One of her hands rests gently on his massive belly, sliding under his shirt to press against the flesh.

“I had a terribly nerve wracking thought,” and he’s possibly still shouting.

“About bad things?” She rubs a soothing circle into his womb.

“No?!”

“About… good things?” and her face goes red like his feels and she’s so close and he can smell her lavender and Watcher he wanted to love her for forever.

“Yes?”

“Will you… tell me what it was?” He can see her freckles clearly tonight despite the soft lighting of her room. Watcher! Was this romantic lighting?!

“It was… about….” He swallows hard, daring to move a hand to her hip. He rests it there and she smiles a little. “It was about you.”

“Oh?”

“And me.”

“Go on.”

“I… can’t.”

“Why not?” Her eyes were darting around his face, as if looking for something.

“I’m… scared.”

Her free hand rests atop his on her hip, then slides up his arm, over his shoulder, and down his neck to his chest. She doesn’t touch his moobs, however. “Don’t be, Pascal.”

“How… how?” His skin is hot and Winnie is so close to him and he wants her to always touch him, to always look at him the way she’s doing right now.

But Pascal Curious rarely got what he wanted.

Instead he got failure, in one form or another.

“Sometimes,” she whispers, and she’s leaned in so close that her breasts are starting to press against him and he can feel her breath as she talks, “you just have to go for it.”

And so he kisses her.

And Watcher! she kisses him back, both hands moving to cup his face and jaw and neck, and to pull him closer so she can press against him more, and very quickly Pascal doesn’t know what he’s doing so he lets her lead and it’s more incredible than he’d imagined it could ever be.

When she pulls back, she presses her forehead against his, her eyes closed. He tries to look at her but his glasses are kind of wonky from the kissing and she’s really close.

Winnie pulls back a little to look at him and ask, “Did you like that, Pascal?”

“Yes.”

“Good,” and then she’s kissing him again.


	5. Chapter 5

Some nights it’s just cuddling in his bed before she leaves him, Winnie in his arms, her sweet face full of adoration when she looks at him. Some nights he joins her and it’s her bed, bigger and fluffier, that they cuddle on, and now he’s properly touched her boobs which are nice and surprisingly heavy. Only over her clothes though! They hadn’t gotten further than that.

Tonight though, tonight she slips his hand under her sweatshirt, up to a breast, and he finds she’s not wearing a bra and Pascal possibly cums in his pants right then and there but he’s too distracted by too much happening, her tongue in his mouth, her hands in his hair, to notice or care or be embarrassed.

Making out, he thinks when she stops kissing him and instead buries her face in the crook of his neck, is pretty fucking nice. It even made not making out things nicer too, knowing that they had made out before and they would make out again. Like when she measured him, and she’d brush against him unnecessarily, or she’d kiss his swollen stomach. The last time she’d measured him, she’d even straddled his hips at some point and they both know she felt his erection, a slight buck to her hips.

“Pascal,” she whimpers against his neck, and his eyes slip closed.

* * *

He sleeps in Winnie’s room now, though they don’t let Vidcund know. He’s become more heavy handed in his comments to her in the evening, and Pascal feels powerless to stop him, relying on Lazlo to try to keep order. His brother would respond by doubling down on his time at the telescope or else in his room, murmuring to himself like the mad scientist he was becoming.

It had been weird at first, for Pascal, who had never shared a bed before in all his life. Winnie’s cold feet, her breathing, the feeling of her rolling over, it had all kept him from sleeping properly the first few nights. But now as he started his ninth month of pregnancy, it was nice.

Spooning, that’s what she’d called it, and she always seemed happy to declare she was the big spoon, her sensual body pressed against his, her hands stroking his aching stomach.

“If I get any bigger,” he comments one night as they’re drifting off to sleep, “I’ll explode.” It makes Winnie laugh.

“Yeah a lot of people feel that way, but it’ll be over soon,” and there’s something almost sad to her voice when she says that. “You… we… we’ll miss this, when it’s over.”

We. “Are we… a we now?” Pascal tries to shift to look at her, Winnie propping herself up on an arm so she’s more easily seen over his shoulder.

“I think so, yeah, unless you have any objections.”

“My only objection is to your cold feet.” That makes the woman laugh, rich and unrestrained and glorious, and Pascal starts to laugh too, with her. Then the baby joins in, moving, and he pulls her hand to his stomach to feel.

“Oh Pascal,” she murmurs, and Winnie moves down the bed to press her mouth against his stretched flesh, her hands touching him all over. He liked it so much when she touched him, but especially when she touched his massive belly: it was as if that was what his body had wanted all along. “Pascal,” and her mouth trails down to a hip point before back up, her nose pressing into his skin, to run her lips over part of a breast. She was so good at listening to him, and being slow in going only a bit further each time in what parts of him she touched so he feels comfortable. Consent had been a multi day conversation and Pascal thought that maybe they’d lived a whole life in those days, talking freely.

He’d told her about his childhood, and going to a private school while his siblings didn’t, and feeling like he never fit in: not at home, not at school, not with the neighborhood kids. College was where he’d learned to just stick to himself but he didn’t like it all that much either, really, beyond the school bits maybe. He wanted something else, something more, but he didn’t know what. His career, and his scientific work, he’d thought that’d be it but it wasn’t. He wasn’t even that upset when the letter came telling him he’d been fired. All he wanted was Winnie and the baby.

She’d told him about her childhood, and idealizing her older brother who was always trying to escape, always trying to leave her behind. He’d been the one obsessed with aliens for a while, and when he’d left for college she’d finally been able to be her own person. She’s studied abroad and worked abroad and seen so many families and made friends with so many varied people. But she’d lost an older lover, and then her brother had gone missing. All she wanted was to have a family, like she’d come close to having so many times.

“Something real,” Pascal had murmured in response and Winnie had turned on the spot to stare at him like he’d made some scientific breakthrough.

“Yes! Yes, Pascal, Watcher yes that’s it!”

“Pascal,” she breathes now and she’s at his ear, her breasts against his arm and chest, her hand dipping low over his heaving stomach. “Pascal, I want to touch you.”

“Yes,” he moans without thought.

“I want to touch you,” she repeats, moving back, pushing at his shoulder to make him roll onto his back. “Can I?”

“Yes,” he repeats again, trying to see her in the dark without his glasses. “Yes, Winnie, yes,” and she could mean touching the tops of his feet for all he cares, he’d be happy!

But that’s not what she means, and that becomes obvious when one hand slips down to cup his cock through his underwear, her other hand stroking up his heaving stomach, over a breast, then back down. Her hands are cold and his body feels hot and he worries his eyes will roll back into his head and never come back.

Pascal becomes so delirious with the pleasure of Winnie touching him, through fabric, then under, with her hands, then insanely with her mouth — Watcher this was happening!, that he doesn’t know how long it lasts or how long he lasts, though he doesn’t imagine it was a respectable amount of time. His habitual masturbation over the years had caused how long he lasted before cuming to length over time, but he still felt like everything ended too early. And when Winnie was touching him? She never complained but he wanted to last longer, to touch her too, so that she felt as incredible as he did and she came too.

What he does know is that after he cums in her mouth, his heart racing and his body softened from his orgasm, is that he wants to hold her in his limp arms that reach towards her. Winnie smiles something between serene and knowing, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips before laying in his arms, her head on his shoulder, her body pressed against his.

He’s never been happier in all his life, even with an unexpected pregnancy happening in his body.

* * *

In the morning she’s gone before he gets up, and checking the clock Pascal can see he overslept more than normal. Winnie had convinced him that it was fine, he was nearly full term in his pregnancy and that would take a lot out of anyone, but still. He liked cuddling with her in the morning, when her hair was a mess and her voice was raspy.

He sits up, a little, and enjoys the site of her crumpled pillow next to him, proof this wasn’t all a dream. At the end of the bed is the crib now, Winnie having insisted she was looking forward to taking care of their baby and they might as well set up shop in the room they actually called their own.

Their baby.

He wasn’t alone anymore.

Pascal Curious comes to a sudden realization, and promises himself he will get Lazlo alone to help him act out this forming plan.

* * *

Dinner is a delicious and light lemon sauce on chicken and orzo, Winnie particularly pleased with herself judging from the massive smile plastered on her face. Lazlo is pleased too.

“Oh my Watcher!” he shouts. “This is the best thing ever! How have I never had this before?!”

“Thank you,” Winnie murmurs, her eyes darting to Pascal quickly. She blushes.

“This is really good,” her secret boyfriend — Watcher, he was a boyfriend! — agrees. “I only wish my stomach wasn’t acting up so much–”

Vidcund slams his knife down, gaining the attention of the other three.

“Is something wrong?” Winnie asks innocently enough, that slight pout to her face that Pascal drools over and even Lazlo had said he found hard to resist.

“No,” Vidcund snaps, shoveling food into his mouth.

“I can make something you like, tomorrow night, if you don’t care for this dish,” the woman suggests, looking to the other brothers. “No reason not to take turns.”

“Agree,” Pascal states, hoping it came off as “I’ve made peace with the situation” and not “she’s put my penis in her mouth.”

“I’m happy with anything you make!” Lazlo laughs, causing Vidcund to slam his fork down too. “Watcher, Viddy, you sure you’re not pregnant? You’re starting to act like Pascal did.”

“Hey!” the eldest brother begins to interrupt before Vidcund’s eyes snap to him and there is something dangerous in them.

Pascal is suddenly afraid of his brother for the first time in his life.

“Uh….” Lazlo clearly had seen the look too, Winnie putting her utensils down and hiding her hands in her lap. To twist them, Pascal imagines, her nervous twitch. “Viddy?”

The blond’s gaze stays for too long on Pascal before moving to Winnie, who suddenly looks small and afraid, and Pascal wants so much to stand up for her and defend her and do those things you do for the person you love. But he doesn’t, because he’s afraid too, and then Vidcund would know he’s in a relationship with Winnie, which would only make the situation infinitely worse and reduce his relationship with his brother to infinitesimal levels.

“You,” and Vidcund’s voice is low, staring at Winnie. “Tomorrow you’re back in your uniform, and in the evenings you are to be here in the main area where I can see you, and if you disobey me even once, you are gone and will never see any of us ever again.”

“Whoa whoa whoa!” and Lazlo stands as he speaks, seeming to tower over them. “Vidcund, calm the fuck down, my man.”

“No!” and Vidcund stands too, his chair falling, and Winnie whimpers and looks to Pascal who decides in that moment that he had to do something if he wanted to make a family with Winnie.

So Pascal stands as well.

Lazlo puts a hand on his shoulder. “Pascal, sit, I’ll handle the toddler.”

“Oh, you’ll handle me‽”

“Maybe toddler wasn’t the right word, perhaps primitive primate is better, hmm?”

“Fuck you Lazlo, you stay the fuck out of this–“

“No, fuck you Vidcund, Winnie isn’t your–”

“She’s my employee,” Pascal interjects, and while normally his nervousness would cause him to shout uncontrollably, instead his tone is low and calm. The three others stare at him, Winnie slowly coming to her feet as well though her vertical disadvantage is still obvious. “Winifred will be paid, from now on, by me and me alone. She will take instructions from me and me alone. And if she has issues with either of you, I will take action.”

Lazlo’s mouth hangs open as he stares. Winnie is out of his line of vision and Pascal can’t risk looking at her, staring instead straight ahead at Vidcund who looks ready to murder someone.

“If that’s how you think this will be,” the blond whispers before leaving the house. They don’t hear him go up to the telescope though; perhaps he’d left entirely.

“Pascal,” a quiet voice breathes, and finally he looks at Winnie who is crying and shaking. “Pascal.”

“Winnie,” and he doesn’t care that he’s never actually told Lazlo about their relationship, he moves to her and holds her in his arms and it’s awkward with his big belly between them but it doesn’t matter as she sobs into his shoulder, gripping at his arms. “Winnie, I won’t let him hurt you. He won’t keep us apart, I swear it.”

She nods against his skin though her crying continues. Pascal chances to glance at Lazlo, who is standing there as if he’s finally seeing what’s been in front of him this whole time. They look at each other and Lazlo nods.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ended up making this one meatier than I'd intended but it all just started to flow together so I didn't want to stop.

“I hope you’re not-“ Pascal starts. After the commotion of dinner, Winnie had gone to bed early, Lazlo volunteering to clean up and Pascal staying to talk.

“Nah, don’t worry about it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’s cool.” Lazlo helps himself to more orzo and lemon sauce, leaning against the kitchen cabinets to eat.

“I would have told you–”

Lazlo laughs, and it’s almost spiteful. “Yeah, I know.”

“Really!”

“Pascal,” and he puts down the bowl and his fork, turning his body to fully face the eldest Curious brother. “You and I have never been that close, we both know that. It’s been Vidcund and me ever since you went to private school, despite him being so damn hard to get along with. And Jenny has always been Jenny, off doing whatever Jenny does, living in a world in her head that we all pretend is reality. Am I pissed you didn’t tell me you’d found a girl to fuck? Hell yeah!”

“Not a girl,” Pascal interrupts.

“What?”

“She’s a woman,” Pascal feels compelled to correct, “it’s patronizing and sexist to–”

“Yeah, sure, cool, whatever, you’re woke now, I’m glad for you, bro. My point is: we,” and Lazlo makes a large hand gesture between them, back and forth, “we have never been friends, only brothers. So I get it. Just be cool with it too so this isn’t weird.”

“But…,” and Lazlo looks like he’s finally met his end with Pascal’s one word. He thinks back to when Winnie had started, and how she’d been so obvious and straightforward that it made everything easy for the man to understand. It made everything clear. “But I want to be friends with you.”

Lazlo shrugs, forking more orzo into his mouth. “What if I don’t want to be your friend?”

Pascal thinks for a moment on that, understanding that his brother was trying to let him down lightly. He runs a hand over his stomach that’s pressing against the kitchen counter where he’d sat in a stool. “I… can’t make you be my friend, so I’d respect that. But I’d be upset, nonetheless. I was hoping to get your help, actually, as my brother and, maybe, my friend. Plus I want you in my baby’s life.”

The youngest Curious rubs at an eye. “Alright, alright, I’ll bite: I’d like to know the little body invader too and now I’m curious as to what you need my help on.”

Pascal smiles.

* * *

“Winnie?” As gently as he can, Pascal closes the door as he tries to slip in without making too much noise. The lump in the bed moves a little beneath the sheets. “Winnie?” The lump moves some more which Pascal takes to mean he should keep talking. “Winnie, what I said at dinner–”

She sits up suddenly, throwing the comforter off from where it had been covering her head. Her hair is a mess and her eyes are alight.

“Winnie…,” and words fail him, the lovers staring at one another. “Winnie, I… I never meant to hurt you, I swear. I did what I had to — what I thought I had to. But I should have done more, I never should have let it come to this, I should have protected you–”

“I don’t need protecting,” she counters, anger in her voice.

“No,” he agrees, feeling desperately, feeling afraid, “you don’t. But still, I want to protect you.” The words tumble from his mouth. “I want to give you everything and I want to make sure you’re never hurt, you’re never in pain–”

“You can’t guarantee those things, Pascal,” she challenges, “you can’t.”

“I know. I know! But I still want to, Winnie,” and he walks to the edge of the bed, wanting desperately to touch her, to hold her, as if that could stop her from slipping away. “Winnie… Winnie, I love you.”

He’s said it. He’s said it, it’s out there in the open, he said it like a normal person but he doesn’t know if now was the time or if she feels the same way or if Pascal has fucked up so badly in trying to do right that he cannot be forgiven.

The woman stares, her mouth open, before suddenly she’s at the edge of the bed and she throws her arms around his neck and holds him close, crying once more. Only this time, Pascal cries too, in fear or relief or both or maybe hormones. They grip each other tightly, the baby between them moving occasionally.

Pascal Curious feels so vulnerable, but also safe, because Winnie was here with him. She pulls back to look at his face, her hands cupping his cheeks, and breathes, “I love you too, Pascal. And I was so, so!, afraid I was going to lose you.”

“No, Winnie, no,” he assures her even though he has no reason to be sure himself, “I won’t let that happen, no matter what. We’ll make this work, somehow, someway.”

“We can’t stay here,” she whispers, leaning in again to hold him close, resting her head on his shoulder. “What are we going to do?”

“I don’t know,” Pascal admits. “I don’t know, but we’ll figure it out.”

* * *

A few nights later they sit on the bed, papers strewn between them. No one has seen Vidcund since the fight. “That’s not enough,” Pascal murmurs, looking at the calculations compared to his bank account.

“We’ll make it work,” Winnie soothes.

“I won’t be able to pay you though–“

“Pascal, I don’t want you to pay me.” He pushes his glasses back up his nose.

“You… don’t?”

“Pascal Curious, as soon as you stood up against your asshole of a brother, I stopped being a Curious family employee and became a Curious family member.”

That stops him dead, half way between grouping some of the papers into a new pile. “You… did?”

A hand reaches out to push hair behind his ear, Winnie leaning over him to press a kiss to his cheek. “Of course I did. I don’t know if I’ve ever loved you more than I did in that moment, watching you stand up for me. I know how hard that must have been for you.”

“Well… yeah,” he admits, face burning.

“You really proved yourself in that moment, you know. I think you proved something to yourself too.” She shuffles the remaining papers into a pile that’s plopped onto the night stand before snuggling beside him. “It was also, in retrospective, really hot to see.”

“Was it?!” Pascal is so confused as to what about him, nine months pregnant, in a shouting match with his brother, was hot.

“Well yeah,” and she blushes faintly, running a hand down his neck to play with the edge of his shirt’s collar. “I mean, you, standing there, standing up for me. You were so passionate, Pascal, and so confident. I loved seeing you like that.” Her hand moves a bit further down, her breasts pressing against his side so Winnie can look up into his face. “It was so Watcher damn sexy, Pascal.”

“Oh?” He’d have to remember that. “How….” He tries to think of something suave and flirty to say. “How… how sexy?” It’s apparently a very good response as it makes Winnie grin and look devious and blush further, the woman moving to straddle his hips. Which, admittedly, is harder now than when she measures him since he’s propped up on pillows, his heaving stomach in the way. But she makes it work, running her hands up and down his body.

“Let me show you,” Winnie whispers and with that she pulls her sweatshirt over her head, leaving only her small sleeping shorts on her body.

It was one thing to know how lithe and lean and lovely Winnie’s body was, Pascal had seen it in enough skimpy outfits and touched it enough both over and under clothing, but he’s never seen her naked. Even when she helped him shower, she was still dressed so she could run about the house as needed.

Without hesitation, because now Pascal was becoming Experienced in Sexual Activities, he reaches out to stroke her breasts, cupping them and squeezing them like he’s started to learn Winnie likes. Her mewls of pleasure encourage him on, especially when she pushes his shirt up to stroke his belly, rolling her hips over his as best she can given the alien intrusion between them.

They touch each other for a while like that, unable to kiss which Pascal would have liked, because now he felt like he knew how to French kiss so that Winnie enjoyed it as much as he did. Still, he likes being able to see the way her eyes close and her head rolls back when he plays with her nipples the way she’d showed him she liked. Pascal even dares to drag a hand down to between her legs, stroking her over her shorts best he can despite not being able to see, his big old pregnant belly in the way.

“Pascal,” the woman purrs deeply. “Pascal, yes.”

“Winnie, I… Winnie, I want to touch you.”

Without breaking her rhythm of hips rocking, she wiggles out of her shorts, and Pascal’s face burns even though he can’t see much of anything.

“Shall I come closer?” and there’s something in her voice that’s only there when they’re alone and sexually engaged that Pascal recognizes and loves, the man nodding and swallowing hard. Winnie moves around his heaving stomach to straddle his chest and suddenly he can see all of her, his hands resting on the sides of her hips. He can see all of her and it’s very different than in diagrams, as he’d been too afraid to look up actual photographs of naked females, but he likes it all the same. “Do you know what to do?” Winnie whispers.

Pascal continues staring at her vulva as he answers, “Not a clue.” That makes his girlfriend laugh before she guides him in how to touch her, to stroke her, to rub her. When she lets go of his hand so she can grip the headboard, her panting loud now, Pascal gives himself credit that he must have been doing pretty well for himself. Then he gets an idea.

“What–” Winnie breathes, resisting ever so slightly his hands tugging at her hips. “Pascal, what–”

He looks up into her eyes far above him. “Want to make you feel good.”

A hand reaches down to stroke the side of his face. “You do.”

“Want to with my mouth though.”

“Oh!” That gets her resisting to stop, and instead he’s the one trying to hold her still, Pascal experimenting to see what gets the best reaction from her. When she screams, “Watcher, Pascal! Yes, don’t stop!” he takes that as a command, sucking and licking at her clitoris until she orgasms, screaming his name over and over and over. And when she shifts off of him, Winnie moves to stroke his cock, straddling his hips again. “Pascal?”

“Yes?” His voice cracks with the pleasure of her touch and the satisfaction of a job well done.

“Pascal, I want you inside me.”

“Wha– what?! How?” Sexual intercourse wasn’t a complete surprise for him to have come up but he had just passed 38 weeks of pregnancy. He could barely stand, how were they suppose to have penetrative intercourse?

Winnie smiles, and it’s devilish and arousing as she removes a pillow from behind him. With Pascal laying more horizontally, she leans back on her legs, taking hold of his cock, and he can’t understand what she’s up to until he feels the head of his erection entering her a little.

It takes everything in him to not cum right then and there.

“Do you like that?” the woman asks breathlessly. Pascal can only nod. “Good!” and then he’s fully in Winnie, watching her breasts bounce as she bounces on him, her hands holding either side of his massive stomach for support. And Pascal wants to reach out to touch her, does try, playing with her nipples for a bit, but it’s hard to reach and to concentrate.

When his arms fall limply to the bed, Winnie takes over — in the bouncing, in the playing with her own breasts, and Pascal watches the incredible sight before him until he cums inside her, hard and hot and more intense than any of his masturbations. She continues bouncing, reaching a hand down past his stomach, before she orgasms as well, once more screaming his name.

He rolls after her as she collapses beside him on the bed, her eyes heavy with exhaustion. “Oh Pascal,” Winnie murmurs so he does his best to pull her close, feeling near tears as she nuzzles against his face .”Oh Pascal, that was wonderful.”

“I… I love you,” and he does start to cry, his girlfriend pulling back to cup his face and smile and kiss him.

“I love you, too, Pascal. I love you so very much.”

Pascal loses track of how long they cuddle like that, whispering sweet nothings that once he would have called meaningless but that now mean actually everything to him.

The baby is calm for once, a rare reprise.

Just as he’s drifting off to sleep, a thought occurs to Pascal and he can’t let it go. Not after tonight, not after this.

“Winnie?”

“Mmm?” She snuggles closer, already half asleep.

“Winnie, I want to ask you something.”

“Hmm? Sure, Pascal, anything.”

“Winnie… Winnie, will you marry me?”

There’s a pause after he says the words, where his heart doesn’t beat and she doesn’t move, before Winnie’s head jerks up to look at him with wide eyes. “Pascal… Pascal?”

Before her, he would have run away. He would have sulked in his failure. He wouldn’t have tried.

But he isn’t that Pascal Curious anymore.

“Winifred, will you marry me?”

“Oh my Watcher,” she breathes. “Oh my Watcher! Yes, Pascal, yes! A thousand times yes, of course I’ll marry you!”

It’s all a blur after that, of limbs, of kisses, of Pascal trying to roll over to get a small bag from the nightstand so Winnie has to help him. They sit up so he can present it to her properly, explaining, “It was my mother’s. I, uh, I had Lazlo get it for me, when he picked up the records.”

“It’s beautiful,” she says in awe, looking at him with loving eyes. “Will you?” and she holds it out to him, Pascal taking a moment to realize what she was implying.

“Oh yeah, yeah.” With hands that are still shaking a bit, he slips the ring onto her finger. “Wow.” He did it. He proposed.

And he wasn’t a virgin when he did it!

What had his life become?!

“Oh Pascal,” and Winnie laughs and kisses him.

* * *

Her hair is strewn across the pillow when he stirs, a pain in his stomach that he’s not used to. Winnie had said most people while pregnant experienced some sort of practice labor pains, but he hadn’t felt any. Was this what she’d meant?

Sitting on the edge of the bed, Pascal tries to breathe deeply before a thought occurs.

A deep, dark thought:

It was time.

He looks over his shoulder, at Winnie asleep, her hair strew across the pillow.

No, he wouldn’t tell her. It would be better this way, whatever happened.

He’d do this on his own.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so excited for this chapter! This is the one I've been wanting to get to for so long, because Aliens.
> 
> Of course as always, if you want more of anything in this story or in a separate story, just let me know!

It had been his idea, when the house was built, to make such a high platform.

Standing outside the room’s door, Pascal looks up at and regrets everything.

The baby moves again, painfully, and muscles contract, Pascal having to brace himself against the wall. It was like the baby had grown extra feet, the way his body was getting beaten up, struggling to make it to the main house, then around his room and Lazlo’s. Finally he makes it to the outside stairs up, having to pull himself up it on the handrail.

He’s groaning by the time he reaches the top of the first flight of stairs, knowing there would be five more.

Oh Watcher! His muscles contract again. This was it, this was happening.

Pascal continues his pathetic journey up, relying on his upper body strength to pull the handrail, so that his lower body would follow. As he does so he thinks of his father, who never said spoke of a wife he’d once had and twins he had carried, he had given birth to. Pascal had thought he was close to his father, had learned to study from him, had gotten into private school thanks to him.

When his brothers didn’t like him, his father had been his friend.

When his mother had died and Pascal was more devastated than he’d expected, his father had been there with him.

When his heart was broken again and again, his father had listened and advised.

It was when his father had died, and Pascal couldn’t sleep, that he became obsessed with two things: running and meeting aliens. It had been during a running session, actually, that he’d pieced together comments Paul had made, some legal records he’d come across in the years after his father’s death, and this weird Internet posting he’d read about aliens in his area of the world that stuck with him for some reason.

Chloe. Lola.

Glabe.

It was as if he hadn’t known his father at all.

The night he’d figured it out, the aliens abducted him.

Pascal falters on a step, nearly to the top of the second staircase, when someone shouts, “Are you crazy, bro?”

“Lazlo, hush!” Pascal wanted to be alone. Something in him knew what he had to do, and didn’t want anyone else involved.

Yet Lazlo runs up after him, quickly, like an in shape asshole. “Pascal, you’re never going to make it.”

“I will– uggh! Eventually!” The pain was getting worse, so much worse, and he felt like he was going to explode, and he really wanted to die rather than keep feeling like this.

“No, you won’t. Come on.” Hands grab under his armpits, hoisting Pascal up with some difficulty. Lazlo gets one of Pascal’s arms around his shoulders and smiles. “Let’s get you to those aliens.”

It’s still hard, even with his brother’s help, but the remaining stairs seem less daunting as they move together.

Pascal wants to say something, as they near the top. Maybe about their father. Maybe about the whole experience. Maybe for Lazlo to know he did love him.

Maybe for Winnie, if he didn’t come back.

Instead, when Lazlo helps him sit on the platform, Pascal looks up at his youngest sibling and says, “Thanks.”

The man smiles, wide. “No worries. You come back safe, understood? I’ll be waiting for ya.”

* * *

He’d waited until he knew Lazlo was back inside the house before signaling to the aliens. Within the minute, Pascal felt himself being lifted in the familiar beam of light.

After the birth, it would all be a blur of lights and sterile rooms and nondescript voices.

But in the moment…

Someone rushes towards him, green and lean and masculine. The someone holds Pascal in his arms and shouts things he doesn’t understand towards others, until Pascal is lifted onto a stretcher.

“There you go, love,” the someone whispers in his ear as the stretcher is brought down a long hallway, beings moving out of the way. “Oh, you’ve done so well, my love, you’ve done so well! Here we go,” and the room is even brighter somehow, Pascal being rolled into the middle. “There we go, that’s it, my love. You sleep for a few minutes and everything will be ready soon, I’m going to take such good care of you.”

As if on command Pascal does seem to fall asleep, waking to find several things have changed.

Like his clothes being gone, replaced with something resembling a hospital gown.

Like a strange feeling in his groin, as if it was different.

Like his voice being gone.

Like his stomach being absolutely, fucking huge.

He begins to panic, his heart race accelerating, because this wasn’t his normally massive stomach — this was a multiples pregnancy stomach and when did that happen and Watcher what was going on!

“Love, my love!” and the being is at his side again, leaning over him, stroking his truly distended stomach. “Don’t panic, no panic, shh, it’s ok, you’re safe, you’re going to be ok. Shh, my love, I know this is a shock but it’s as we discussed, when last you were here.”

Pascal tries to speak.

“Ah, no no! Don’t speak, don’t worry, there’s nothing to be said.” The being kisses his forehead. “Twelve will be here soon, for the triplets.” Triplets! Watcher, he was having triplets! “And I’m here for our baby.” Wait… wait, quadruplets?!

The being nuzzles against his face, the way Winnie would, but Winnie was his girlfriend — his fiancée. Who was this? What was this?

“Oh my love, my love, how I have waited for today.” The being keeps stroking his distended stomach, a hand slipping beneath the hospital gown to press against the bare flesh, and it feels so Watcher good that Pascal can feel himself getting hard but he’s also confused and scared and alone.

Get abducted by aliens, he’d thought. It’ll be great, he’d thought. I’ll become a famous scientists, he’d thought.

Quadruplets?!?!

“Fifteen!” a voice barks, and everyone else in the room besides Pascal and the being beside him leave, a taller green being with a very broad build approaching the other side of the bed.

“Look, Twelve: look at our beautiful creation.”

Pascal stares up between them, frozen in place, before joining them in taking in his stomach. The new being, Twelve, draws back the hospital gown so that his stomach is full exposed in all his stretched and full glory. Pascal can see feet and hands pressing against him from within.

Oh Watcher: quadruplets!!!

“Perfect,” Twelve whispers, moving towards Pascal’s legs. He lifts each one up into stirrups, making Pascal feel even more exposed than he had before. Fifteen, was that his name? Fifteen however stays beside him, both hands now stroking his stomach over and over and over. “You already ran the procedure?”

“I did,” Fifteen responds.

“And?”

“He should be ready momentarily.”

“Good.”

Pascal doesn’t know what’s happening, fighting to make sense of their words and what his body is feeling and all the conflicting signals he’s getting.

Then Twelve touches part of him that definitely, fundamentally hadn’t been there before because Pascal Is Male and that feels like a female bit he’s touching. He’s seen a female naked before, he knows things now!

“How is he?” Fifteen whispers, leaning down to kiss Pascal’s protruding belly button. The man can’t see past his stomach to what Twelve is doing anymore, but there is definitely a hand in a hole that is not his anus, and there are definitely babies inside him trying to come out.

“He’s ready.”

* * *

It goes on for hours, Twelve and Fifteen on either side of him, giving him instructions and soothing encouragements respectively. Others fill the room, one to birth Pascal, three to one side besides basinets, another to the other.

He pushes as he’s told, and thinks of Winnie, and his father, and the baby he’d thought he was carrying that is actually four babies. He pushes and pushes and pushes until he thinks he’ll explode, until finally one baby is out, and quickly the second wants to join. Both are given over to some sort of nurses, Twelve leaving to look at them.

Fifteen leans down to kiss his cheek and whisper, “They’re so beautiful, my love, so very beautiful. And ours is next.” He strokes Pascal’s stomach again, as he’d been doing since the pushing started, which felt so heavenly and offset the pain. “My baby I filled you with. Do you remember when I pollinated you? Twelve is so old fashioned, but you and I, we made beautiful love. Do you remember, my love? When I fucked our baby into you?”

Pascal doesn’t remember. He doesn’t remember any of it, until suddenly he does, being in a room like this, Twelve using a machine on him that fucked him mechanically and incredibly, as if it knew his ever fantasy. Then Fifteen had come, and been so much slower, romantic almost. He’d said many things to Pascal, about how he’d find touches to his pregnant stomach arousing after this, about how he’d be birthed as the finest experiment ever run by their people, about how Fifteen would write such a wonderful scientific paper about the experience that would change people’s views on so much.

“You’d begged for it,” Fifteen murmurs before Pascal feels the urge to push again, and push, and the other beings are speaking in a language he doesn’t understand and the baby comes out and this one, this one is held up for Pascal and Fifteen to view though Pascal can’t see, his distended stomach is in his way. “Oh yes!” Fifteen cries, and while the baby is taken away, Fifteen kisses Pascal deeply. “Our baby! Our baby!”

After that the exhaustion starts to become too much, and Twelve barks something as Pascal pushes the last baby out, some machine being rolled over and attached over his still extended stomach to assist him. But the baby is birthed at last too, and joins the rest of Twelve’s children in being rolled out.

Pascal never sees them.

“Oh my love,” Fifteen keeps whispering to him. “Oh my love, my love. I wish I could keep you here with me, we could have so many babies.”

“That’s not the plan,” Twelve interrupts before switching languages. Everyone leaves at that, taking the remaining baby. Fifteen kisses Pascal once more, whispering,

“I will always love you, my love.”

Alone now with Twelve, Pascal doesn’t know what to do. The last few hours had been as if they weren’t happening to him, they were happening to someone else. They had been horrible and wonderful and painful and erotic and he’d given birth — he’d given birth four times! He’d given birth to four babies who came into the world screaming, and three had been taken from him without hesitation, and one had been presented to him though he hadn’t actually seen the baby.

A hand strokes up and down a thigh, which is still in the stirrup. “You did do well, Human,” Twelve says. “If the plan allowed it, we would pollinate you more, but we cannot. Your body is returning to its natural state,” the alien continues. “You have performed admirably, and for that, I give you this.” A hand grips his cock, tightly, and Pascal can’t see, the machine they’d brought in his still over him, but he can feel his body changing again, shifting, going back to the way it had been.

Twelve strokes him, and it feels so good that Pascal thinks he’ll cum.

“May you have as much success,” Twelve states in a tone of authority, “with breeding others, as we have had with you.”

And then he’s asleep again.

And then he’s on the platform where the telescope is.

“Pascal!” a voice screams but he doesn’t know who or from where.

He doesn’t, in fact, remember anything since he was last on the platform where the telescope is.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think some of these chapters I've overthought, so they don't come out the way I want them to, but I try.

“Pascal!” Footsteps bang on the stairs, and the scientist tries to move but he hurts all over. He whimpers a little, and something else near him whimpers too. “Pascal!” The banging is getting closer, as is the voice, until Winnie drops to her knees in front of him, touching him all over as if she can’t believe he’s here. “Pascal, Pascal, oh Pascal!” Lazlo isn’t too far behind her.

“Winnie,” Pascal manages, his throat tight as if he couldn’t speak. “Winnie–” but she’s not looking at him anymore.

Instead she moves to something beside him, lifting it gently into her arms.

Oh Watcher!

The baby!

The woman cradles the baby in her arms like a natural, one hand moving all over just as she’d done to her fiancé. That’s when Pascal notices she’s crying. “Winnie?”

“Oh Pascal,” she breathes, her eyes moving back to him. And the sight of her, holding his baby — holding their baby, makes him start to tear up too. “Pascal, you did it.”

“Yeah,” he agrees stupidly, exhausted and in pain and happier than he’s ever been before in his life. He looks up to find Lazlo crying as well.

“Congrats, bro,” his younger brother half laughs. “You’re a dad now!”

Pascal half laughs as well. “Oh my Watcher, I’m a father now.” He moves a hand to Winnie’s knee, stealing her attention away from the baby. “And you’re a mother.”

She smiles wide, and cries, and leans forward to kiss him tenderly; Pascal can’t think of anything better in the world than this, right here. He almost wants it to never end.

“Well,” Lazlo sighs eventually, “should we, uh, get you and the little one back to solid ground?”

“That is a good idea,” Winnie murmurs, “Vidcund hasn’t come back in a few days but we shouldn’t risk it much longer.”

“Should I–” Lazlo steps forward, awkward swinging his arms in a rounded way as if he was carrying an invisible box. “How do we–“

“I’ll take the baby,” Winnie says with a confidence Pascal has never had, positively glowing at her future brother-in-law as she holds the baby in her arms. “You help Pascal.”

“Lady first?”

“No no, the two of you are much more likely to fall.”

“That,” Pascal breathes out while trying to sit up, causing an excruciating shooting of pain in his abdomen, “is fair.”

* * *

Eventually Lazlo helps him onto the edge of the bed, Winnie following behind, cooing and bouncing the baby in her arms. Pascal is transfixed by the sight until his brother clears his throat uncomfortably.

“I feel like I should stop intruding,” he mutters, edging his way out of the room.

“Nonsense,” Winnie objects but she doesn’t push it and neither does Pascal, Lazlo giving a little awkward wave on the way out.

When the door is closed and they’re finally alone, Pascal realizes something.

“Winnie?”

“Hmm?” She moves to sit beside him on the bed, the baby still wrapped up in her arms, her eyes still glued to the little bundle.

“Winnie, I… I haven’t seen the baby yet.”

“What?! How?!”

“I… I don’t….” He doesn’t know. Maybe he has seen his baby before? Maybe he doesn’t remember?

How could he not remember?

“I don’t know,” and he begins to cry again, overwhelmed by everything going on, everything that’s happened, everything that was now going to happen.

“Oh Pascal,” and Winnie presses up to him, the baby between them, as she kisses all around his face. “Oh Pascal, I’m sorry–”

“No, no–”

“You’ve been through so much! I woke up and you weren’t here and I was so worried.”

A pang of guilt shoots through him. “I… I’m sorry. I just needed to do this alone.”

The woman nods. “Of course, Pascal, and now that you and the baby are home again, I don’t need to worry anymore.”

“I thought this,” he tries to joke, “is when we start worrying.” She humors him with a laugh.

They fall into a content silence, Winnie sat facing him, rocking the baby back and forth between them, so small in her arms. The blonde sings a quiet lullaby in French, when the baby starts to squirm.

Yet there’s a racing to his heart, as if a panic attack was coming on, so Pascal reaches forward to pull at the blankets. “Pascal,” Winnie questions, “what are you doing?”

“I want to see my baby.” Did the baby look like him? Was the baby male or female? Was the baby healthy?

“Here, no, like this.” Winnie gets the baby into his arms, Pascal’s almost panic attack moving instead towards an intense overwhelming feeling.

He was holding his baby.

He was holding his baby in his arms.

He was holding a life he grew inside himself.

Watcher in the skies above!

“There you go,” and Winnie begins to undo the blanket the baby had been bundled up in, a pale green cloth that gives way to skin lighter than Pascal’s. The baby squirms. “Better, my love?”

Pascal nods, his eyes darting everywhere. How many fingers? How many toes? He couldn’t find anything wrong but he also hadn’t prepared for this moment like he should have, he hadn’t studied enough of newborn anatomy and physiology.

“Have you named–” Winnie starts to ask before she catches herself. “Oh, do… do you know the baby’s…?”

Shaking his head, Pascal opens the baby’s diaper. So far the baby had been quiet and content, looking around with big, light blue eyes in curiosity. No crying, no screaming, just curiosity.

A curious little Curious girl.

“A daughter,” Winnie breathes, her forehead pressed against Pascal’s. “Oh my love, you have a daughter.” He starts to cry, correcting,

“We have a daughter. Our daughter, Winnie.”

The sun is starting to rise outside, Winnie staring at him as if she’d never look away. “Our baby.”

* * *

They fall asleep with the baby on Pascal’s bare chest, Winnie insisting the skin to skin contact would be good for them. Pascal is too tired to ask too many questions, especially when Winnie snuggles up next to him under his arm, having pulled all the shades and curtains in the room to block out the day’s sun.

Pascal wakes first, to a stirring baby. He rubs her back carefully, still not as confident as his fiancée in his handling of a baby.

“Talk to her,” Winnie murmurs, still seemingly asleep.

“Come again?”

“Talk to her,” and the woman shifts, rolling away. “You never talked to her when she was in your belly, talk to her now. Have your alone time.”

“You’re just trying to sleep,” Pascal teases.

“You might have given birth but I was up panicking while you were gone. Talk to your daughter.”

He waits until he can hear Winnie’s gentle breathing of sleep, stroking his daughter’s back and feeling awkward. Great, she wasn’t even a day old yet and already he had nothing to say to her.

“Hi… baby,” he starts, feeling like an idiot, but the baby makes a soft sound that seems like approval at the choice of openers. “I’m… I’m so happy to finally have you here. I’ve… I’ve been waiting, to meet you.

“And I, uh, I don’t know really how to be a… be a papa, but your mama seems to know what she’s doing. She’s good like that. She’s the brains, I’m the good looks,” he jokes, making himself laugh.

The baby doesn’t laugh at his joke. Pascal supposes it wasn’t that good anyway, but he doesn’t know what else to say, so instead he goes back to sleep.

* * *

He’s awoken by the sudden shriek of the baby, Winnie at his side in an instant.

“Knew it would only last so long,” the woman murmurs, Pascal still groggy. “I think she’s hungry.”

“Hungry,” he repeats, his brain struggling to figure out what the solution was for that problem. He knew the solution, somewhere.

“–with that?” Winnie finishes and Pascal shakes his head.

“Sorry, what?”

“Are you comfortable with that? Breast feeding.”

Pascal stares. He was a cis man, he couldn’t breast feed. Then again, he had given birth. That didn’t make sense either.

“You help?” Why was his brain running so slowly? Why were his thoughts so incomplete? His body hurt everywhere all at once and his mind was essentially turned off and Pascal really, really needed Winnie on this one. That was why Vidcund had hired her, right? To help with the baby. That meant she knew about babies. Pascal didn’t know about babies.

“I will worry about you,” the blonde whispers, “after she’s latched, don’t resist me.” So he doesn’t, Winnie shifting the baby into his arms and to one moob, coaxing the nipple into the baby’s mouth. “Come on,” and finally the baby starts sucking. “There we are.”

Pascal watches as if this wasn’t his body. “She’s eating.”

“Yes she is,” Winnie agrees.

“I’m tired.”

“Yes you are,” Winnie agrees again, pulling a shirt on over her head. When had she taken off her clothes from yesterday? Pascal’s brain was all fuzzy. “I think,” and she moves to stand beside him in the bed, the baby happily sucking away, “whatever the aliens did to you is really taking its toll now. You rest, I’ll handle taking care of little Miss Curious.”

“Eloise,” Pascal corrects, his eyes already drifting closed.

“Pardon?”

“Like that French lady you like so much, the medieval one who wrote the feminist things. I really like her.”

“Do you… mean Héloïse?”

“Yeah,” and the man smiles. “Eloise Curious.”


	9. Chapter 9

Elle is three days old when Vidcund returns to the Curious residence at half past eight at night. They can hear his screaming with Lazlo, Winnie running back to their room to lock the door and draw all the curtains. Their baby, however, sleeps away on her father’s chest.

The screaming moves into the house before coming back out again towards them, Vidcund finally banging on the door.

“Pascal! Pascal, have the baby already!”

Winnie and Pascal share a look: he didn’t know.

“I want that baby! I want to run my experiments!”

Winnie begins to cry, standing between the door and the bed. Pascal reaches out a hand for her, his other cradling the baby as if he could protect her from not just her uncle but the whole world.

“You have to have that baby eventually, Pascal! And when you do, it’ll be mine!”

* * *

It’s three in the morning and neither of them are asleep, Elle feeding as Winnie folds clothes.

“We can’t stay here any longer,” Pascal says. His fiancée pauses in her work but doesn’t look up.

“No, we can’t.”

The silence stretches on between them despite this not being a new revelation, just one that’s finally been put to words.

“I need to call Paul,” Pascal announces, Elle starting to fuss in a way that signified she was almost done eating.

“Paul? Your brother-in-law?” Winnie stands to put the folded clothes away, coming to Pascal’s side with a cloth for Elle to burp on. “What can he do?”

“A lot,” Pascal says and he wants to elaborate, he wants to explain, but he’s very tired.

“I’m… trusting you on this one, Pascal.” He looks up to find Winnie with a serious look on her face, watching him. “Elle and I need you on this one.”

No pressure, he thinks, shifting his daughter to burp her over his shoulder.

“I know. And I won’t let you down.”

* * *

Lazlo half spits out his breakfast when he sees Pascal sneaking around the corner.

“Is he here?” Pascal whispers.

“No! But– but he might come back soon.”

“I need to call Paul,” and even as he speaks he picks up the phone, starting to dial the number. “I need you to buy me time.”

“Yeah,” Lazlo agrees, picking up his cereal bowl and spoon. “Yeah, I can do that.”

“Thank you!” Pascal gets in before his brother leaves, the phone ringing on Paul’s side. “Paul, it’s Pascal.”

“Pascal,” and his voice is low and slow as always, practiced to perfection. “Has it happened?”

“Yes.”

“Recently?”

“The initial contact was ten months ago. I have recently made contact again.”

“Ah! Congratulations.”

“Thank you Paul. Vidcund doesn’t know though.”

“He doesn’t?” There’s the sound of laughter in the background.

“About the second contact. He’s getting weird.”

“Weirder than usual?”

“Way weirder, and more controlling. I can’t stay here.”

“Where will you go?”

“That’s… uh, that’s what I’m calling about.”

* * *

Elle is seven days old when the plan goes into action. Lazlo gets Vidcund out of the house by saying there were reports of alien activity by where the Beakers lived. Winnie finishes packing up a suitcase of essentials, running through the house to grab any last items and shove them into packed boxes. Pascal feeds Elle, changing her diaper, trying best he can to prepare her for the journey.

Finally Paul drives up, the moving truck not far behind him. Winnie takes the lead in going out to meet them all, Pascal staying inside with Elle. He was still sore from the birth and unused to moving around too much, but he also needed the movers to not suspect anything.

“–everything in here, the bed should be able to come out in one piece.” Winnie shows one of the movers into the room, Pascal rocking Elle. “This is my fiancé Pascal and his daughter Elle.”

“Oh?” the mover peaks an eyebrow. “Not your daughter, then?”

“No,” Winnie says with poise, “she’s from his previous long term relationship.” When the mover isn’t looking, Pascal raises an eyebrow. The woman shakes her head. “So that’s it from me, any other questions from you?”

“Pascal,” a voice interrupts and turning he finds it’s Paul standing in the doorway, thin limbs and coiffed hair as always. “Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” and Pascal tries best he can to get around the mover without wincing, Winnie distracting the man until Pascal and Paul are outside. “Watcher,” he breathes so only Paul can hear him, “everything still hurts when I move.”

“Let me,” and Paul takes Elle from him. At first this makes Pascal panic, his heart racing, but then he remembers that Paul is his friend helping him. And when he sees the way his brother-in-law melts holding a baby, he feels even better.

“Am I going to be in trouble with Jenny when you go home and announce you’d like another baby?”

“Mmm hmm,” Paul agrees. “Now let’s you get to the car,” he coos at Elle, “get you all buckled up.”

With Paul’s arm supporting him, Pascal manages to hobble his way to the car, movers starting to already pack up Winnie and his things. “You ok?” one of them calls out.

“He hurt himself at work,” Winnie calls back in response, suddenly showing up. “Here, let me take the baby while you get Pascal in the car.” Everything about her movements is smooth as if she was in control of the whole operation. Pascal supposes she is, and tries to smile at her, but she’s already looking away.

He wonders, for a brief moment, if she’s ashamed to be seen with him. She’d already brush off their daughter as his daughter.

Paul gets him into the back seat and Pascal groans at buckling himself in, the pressure across his stomach agonizing. But he tells himself this was what had to be done and it’d be over soon, Paul taking back Elle to move around the car for the other side.

“Did you still have this?” Pascal asks as Paul fusses with the baby carseat.

“What? No, this is new, they improve them all the time.” Paul handles all the buckles and straps like a pro which, as a father of two, Pascal supposes he was. “Told Jenny it was a gift for someone, figure it’d help so we can drive you or Winnie around.”

Elle settles into the seat, squirming a little at the unfamiliar surroundings. “Did you tell Jenny, about…?”

“No, I thought you should.” Paul pulls back to admire his work and smile. “I just said someone had had a surprise bundle delivered to them, and left her guessing since then. She’s quite enjoying the game.”

Pascal chuckles. That would be Jenny, and even if they told her the full truth, she’d tell the story in a different way so that it made sense in her mind with how she viewed the world. She didn’t think of her husband as an alien but rather as a hard working immigrant. Her husband and son weren’t green in skin tone but rather tanned very particularly, it was an uncommon skin condition. The Curious family had learned too just let her be in her own way, as it hurt no one and she was always so upbeat.

“We’ll be there by the time you arrive!” Winnie calls as she approaches the car. “The movers are set,” she tells Paul, “so we’re ready when you are.”

“Let us leave then.”

* * *

The car ride is awkward, Pascal not sure how physical he could be in front of Paul with his fiancé, nor what she would tolerate. Plus the pain in his body occupies what time he doesn’t spend fussing over Elle.

Paul pulls up in front of a yellow colored house, not too far from him and Jenny. “Here it is,” the man says, “home sweet home.”

“How many bedrooms?” Winnie asks, already beginning to unbuckle Elle.

“One, it was the best I could find given the timeline.”

“It’s perfect, Paul,” Pascal and Winnie both say at once. When their eyes meet, they blush and look away. Winnie takes Elle into her arms, Pascal carefully freeing himself from his seatbelt nightmare.

Inside the house is… underwhelming. There’s carpet in the main room, and old paint on the wall. There’s a bedroom that’s way larger than he’s used to, and a bathroom that seems adequate. The kitchen is sorely outdated and missing a fridge, but all of the other basics are there.

Pascal sits in a chair left in the kitchen, groaning. Winnie bounces Elle in her arms, her eyes taking in everything, and the man can almost hear the todo list she was making.

“As I said,” Paul begins in his low, slow tone, placing a hand on Pascal’s shoulder, “it was the best I could find given the timeline you had. I hope this will suffice for the time being.”

“It does,” Pascal assures as Winnie and the baby bounce into the bedroom. “How much is the rent?”

“No rent.”

“No rent? Paul– did you buy it?”

His brother-in-law has a blank face. “It seemed the better option for a family.”

“I mean–”

“This way you can be assured of consistent housing.”

“Paul, I– I don’t have the money to pay you back.” Winnie had already begun reading out to him what their new budget would be, and even then they only had so much time before they needed new income.

“I do not require money,” Paul says with a slight rise in his voice.

“Paul–”

“What I want in return,” the man interrupts, “is to know that my family is safe. And to be allowed involvement in the raising of my niece.” As if on cue, Winnie and Elle bounce into the room. “My wife has told me we will not be having any more children.”

“Well you’re welcome to babysit whenever you’d like,” Winnie jokes. She turns to Pascal and her face becomes serious. “The movers will be here soon, do you and Elle want to wait outside in the shade? I’ll take care of the furniture.”

He’s sure, as she hands him the baby, that he’s losing her.


End file.
